In data communication systems information is often transferred (downloaded) from one device to another device. For example, the user of the receiving device is browsing the internet wherein information relating to browsed web pages need to be transferred to the receiving device. Due to the limited data transfer rate the download takes some time. Therefore, the user of the receiving device may need to wait before the information is in use. There are systems in which the progress of the download (i.e. the amount of the downloaded information) is shown e.g. in percent wherein the user can evaluate the time needed to complete the download. There are also systems in which the information is downloaded in a stepwise manner so that in the first step only a rough indication of the fact that data is transferred wherein the receiving device can show a rough image indicator on the display of the receiving device. At later steps more accurate information is transferred and the display is updated during the transferring process. This kind of arrangement enables the user to see a coarse image without the need to wait for the completion of the data transfer process.
The above described methods have the drawback that the receiving device may not be able to properly show the progress of the download especially when the receiving device is a mobile device. It may also take more time to download information to a mobile device compared with a situation in which the receiving device is fixedly connected to a high speed (wired line) data transfer network. Further, if the user has selected more than one page of data to be downloaded at the same time it may not be easy to see the progress of the download of each separate page. The user needs to separately check the status of each different download process.
There are some web browser applications in which the user can select whether to allow/prevent the loading of pictures of web pages. However, this selection affects every page the user selects for loading and every picture on a page.
In prior art systems the user has no other possibility than the above mentioned picture loading selection to define which parts of the pages should be downloaded. Moreover, the user has no control on the priority between the pages to be downloaded.